BARNEY GREENWAY Says MITCH HARRIS Will 'Most Likely' Play On Next NAPALM DEATH Album

Metal Wani‘s Jake Patton recently conducted an interview with vocalist Mark “Barney” Greenway of British grindcore pioneers NAPALM DEATH. You can now listen to the chat below.

Asked about the status of the songwriting sessions for NAPALM DEATH‘s follow-up to 2015’s “Apex Predator – Easy Meat” album, Barney said: “We’re gonna start working on it soon. There’s primary work being done right now. It’s just in the first stages, really, so there’s nothing really solid to tell. It’s just in the preliminary stage, basically.”

Greenway also spoke about how NAPALM DEATH‘s musical approach has evolved over the years as the band has become more commercially successful.

“Our way of approaching things is always the same,” he said. “Every time we make an album or such, the thought in our minds is not, ‘How can we finally put our button on the secret to commercial success?’ [Laughs] It doesn’t roll that way with us. We simply try and make a combination of the best and most extreme that we feel we can at the time. Now, I think the one thing I would say is that in terms of making a good blend of the very traditional NAPALM stuff — the fast stuff — to the more skewed kind of NAPALM stuff, which is that, if you like, post-punk noise sort of very avantgarde stuff mixed in, I think we’re starting to get better and better with that in terms of the mix; it’s quite seamless now, in my opinion. And that side of things is what has seemed to make more and more people interested. Because I know a lot of bands’ record sales are increasing, but ours are going up.”

Greenway also addressed the status of NAPALM DEATH guitarist Mitch Harris, who has been taking a leave of absence from the band since late 2014 to focus on his family life.

“Mitch is still a member of the band as such,” Barney explained. “This is a situation that we’re still working on now. As is quite obvious to people, Mitch hasn’t been able to tour with us. I’ve gotta be honest — we don’t know whether that situation is gonna change or not; we just don’t. But we’re not people to do anything drastic with that situation. We don’t see things as irretrievable. So we are working on it right now. Mitch is still a member of the band. He most likely will record with us on the next album as things are; in fact, I think it’s pretty dead set that he will. And that’s it, really. There’s nothing sinister behind it. It’s a set of circumstances that have kind of worked out that way.”

He continued: “Those kind of questions might get quite complex with some bands — with any band, basically — but I don’t have a problem speaking about ’em. Obviously, some things will remain private behind between us and Mitch, because they don’t need to be out there in the rest of the world. But there’s nothing sinister behind this whole thing. It was a set of life circumstances that brought us to the situation that we’ve got. I’m not embarrassed by it, it doesn’t bother me. It’s not a problem at all — I have no problem speaking about it. There’s nothing sinister about it. It’s how we move forward from here. And there are definitely ways forward. All is not lost.”

Harris took an indefinite break in the fall of 2014 to tend to a family situation and Wikipedia initially wrongly scrubbed him from the band roster. He has since been temporarily replaced by John Cooke (CORRUPT MORAL ALTAR).

“Apex Predator – Easy Meat” was released in January 2015 via Century Media Records.